Backupper fast to to start, backup gets progressively slower
I installed Backupper Standard 3.2 a few hours ago and was impressed by the very simple and clean user interface. I first did a system backup of my Windows 7 boot drive, which is 148GB in total with half actually used. The backup went quite quickly, including checkling backup integrity.
So then I started a backup of my second drive which is 500GB, which is 80% full. This backup also started quite quickly. The initial time estimate was 3 hours. Now after a couple of hours it has slowed to a crawl and has only completed 16%. The backup speed is steadily falling every minute and is now reading 7.78MB/s. The initial speed was considerably higher. I did not switch on compression.
Why is it taking so long? The estimated time to complete is now 12 hours (initially 3). If it keeps getting slower, the total time will probably be measured in days by the time it actually completes!
By the way, Windows Task Manager/Performance Tab shows CPU usage at 100% constantly. Any other background task is idle.
Comments
About half an hour after I posted the above, the backup has suddenly got faster!! It's now doing 11MB/s, it's completed 31% and the remaining time is estimated at 7 hours, all of which is much better than earlier.
Could this slow backup speed near the start have had something to do with the fact that the drive being backed up (500GB/80% full) does contain several very large image files from other backup software (Acronis)?
Also, Windows Task Manager now puts CPU usage at around 73% (earlier it was 100%).
Hi Little Tyke
Did the speed go faser or not? And did the backup task finish? The speed is related to the size and quantity of your file .We suggest that you should do a hard disk defragment before you do a backup.
Yes, it did go faster. The backup finished successfully and so did the integrity check. But what is not explained so far is why it was quite fast to begin with, then slowed to a crawl, then speeded up again. But I point out again that the source disk (the one being backed up) contains a number of folders, one of which contains 68 *.tib files from previous runs of Acronis. These *.tib files, many of which are over 4GB in size, amount to 274GB in total.
As for defrag, the destination disk is a brand-new (bought yesterday) WD External 2TB Elements portable drive and thus never used, apart from WD's own testing.
As for the overall time taken, AEMOI Backupper estimated about three hours at the start of the backup, then when the backup speed fell right down, the estimated time went up as high as 13 hours, then finally it speeded up and the actual time taken was about 5 hours for the backup and maybe a couple of hours extra for the integrity check.
However, I'm not complaining! The software is free, after all. And it's a lot easier to use than Acronis True Image 2015, which I've disabled now.
Also, I have just used Utilities/Explore to mount the virtual drive and that, too, was completely successful.
Sorry for that we let you disappointed.But we will improve it.
You told that you do back up 400GB uncompressed in five hours, but you do not say the USB connections 2.0 or 3.0, and is it from the bootable media or from the live windows. On USB3 on both disks, backup of 400GB will take approximately 2 and half hours. On USB2 on one or both disks, backup of 400GB will take approximately 7 hours. I do not see anything wrong with an initial prediction of three hours and a final outcome of five hours.
The imprecise prediction of time, and indication of speed, is not wrong for large files. Usually such products add file size only whenever a source file is completed, that is the amount of GB makes big jumps and therefore the calculation. In my opinion it worked at full speed all time.
There could be virus scanning on the data read and written, or the computer going to sleep but this is speculative from my side and did probably not happen. Defrag does not matter.
Comparison or integrity check is not necessary, as the disk integrity today is not an issue. I never do it. There may be issues, but issues are not a bad compare or a corrupt image.
The PC has USB 2.0 connections only. Perhaps I will get a PCI card that enables USB 3.0. Don't forget that this was only my second backup test after installing AEMOI Standard, so I didn't know what to expect. Now that I have seen that the backup completed successfully, I won't be concerned next time. I'll probably run the backup overnight when it won't matter how long it takes.
The drive that was backed up was a data drive, not the Windows boot drive.